date machine : dating

Love Machine: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, or Leaving Home

Date Machine: I'm Too Sexy For Your Blog

amboabe — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:14:00 GMT

I try to not worry too much about my appearance, but it still winds up feeling like a trip to church or the office. There's a continuing knowledge that I'm being inspected by someone else, appraised on physical appearance, among other things. I always wind up being a more hygienic, self-censoring version of myself when I'm on a date. I wish I could say that I'm completely uninhibited when meeting new people, offering an open and free-spirited glimpse at my truest self, but I'm not. I edit myself, even when I'm consciously trying not to.

One of my worst relationship fears is becoming de-romanticized in the eyes of my partner. I fall hard for people. I swoon. My heart skips beats. I don't always understand what the women I'm with see when they're with me, but I've got a vague faith in the existence of some good qualities which, in the right light, can be alluring. I'm not completely sure how that comes about, or what exact behavior makes it most likely, but it happens.

I've been rebuffed for the way I describe people, mostly women, in my posts. I said one date had a "flat butt," another looked like "a teenage boy in drag." I described a sex fantasy with an older woman and her "speckled hand, with its knots of blue-green veins." I waxed lyrically about the bulbous calluses on the third toe of a certain special someone. Some called me pessimistic; others said I was being cruel. The owner of the allegedly flat butt told me that I was entirely inaccurate.

There's a tremendous pressure to be optimistic and complimentary in our every day candor. Is there an honest way to answer when someone asks how you're doing? Is everyone always doing "pretty good?" Are all the people you've ever been attracted to Grecian totems of beauty? Has nobody ever fallen in love with someone that had a gap tooth, halitosis, or knock-knees? We're bred to covet beauty, to possess it in a way that validates ourselves. We must all be fabulous people with alluring silhouettes and unblemished skin, and so too the company we keep.

In my worst fantasies, that is the world I fail in. It's where my charms are superficial and evaporate as soon as I'm caught picking my nose on the couch or rabidly forking pasta into my mouth with ugly smacking noises. I fear that place where soapy hair left in the shower drain is grounds for divorce, and morning breath a personal degradation.

Before I lost my virginity I remember talking with my friend J, who had just lost his. He told me about the startling phenomenon of female nipple hair. I was stunned, nothing in porn magazines or movies had prepared me to consider such a thing. I thought sex was all smoothness and candle-lit montage. I couldn't imagine a place for nipple hairs in all the velveteen pageantry of centerfold humping.

There's always a gap between the things we want to be true and the things that are. In dating, it's easy to fall back on insecurity and try to upsell yourself, to offer someone the showroom floor version of yourself. A wonderbra, an undersized t-shirt, a dimly-lit bar, all of it points towards the imagination, inviting the other person to invent their own fantasy of beauty and attraction. There's no room for love handles, cellulite, or back hair.

All the little imperfections, the strange sounds we make when we chew, the funny walk, the odd slouch, the widened ankle, the hairy armpit, the flat butt, the liver spot, the halitosis; it's all a part of who we are. It's all a part of the vessel that we have to share with another person, the body that can become an instrument of intimacy and sweaty, slurpy sex.

Over Thanksgiving, I described my body as an alphabet. That's all it is to me; neither positive or negative, beautiful or repulsive, until it's made that way through some animated expression. When I meet new people and try to figure out how our two bodies might relate to each other physically, all those details are opaque fragments, inexpressive and untranslatable. To me they aren't imperfection; they're building blocks.

Previous Posts:

Date Machine: Super Macho Man Slumber Party

Sex Machine: Having Sex in Your Parents' House During the Holidays

Date Night: Trying to Behave on a Boring Coffee Date

Sex Machine: Sex with Older Women, or How I Would Make Love to Gloria Swanson

Love Machine: Using Your Words, or I Like Pap

Date Machine: Drunk Emailing with J, or How To Fail at Seduction

Sex Machine: Listening to the Neighbors Have Sex

Date Night: In Which I Try To Believe In Aliens

Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines Redux

Date Machine: Drunk Emailing with J, or How To Fail at Seduction

Sex Machine: The last 4 people I F*CKED just slipped my mind..

zeitgeisty — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:04:00 GMT

‘So just how many HAVE you been with? Be honest!’

‘22’

‘Really?? That seems a bit high…I don't believe it!’

‘Well, it's not so high for a man of my advanced years.. ’

She wondered whether I could actually remember them all. As 22 isn’t exactly what I would call a lofty number, I scoffed…

‘What are you talking about? I remember them all very well! I can even give you the list and describe the nature of each relationship.’

So I began the recounting, but mysteriously I could only recall 18. I searched deep into my brain-al recesses and double backed a few times, but I couldn’t come up with the other 4. After a while I wondered whether or not I had ‘padded’ my number. Perhaps I had actually only been with 18.

It was all a bit disconcerting.

Later that night I sat down at the computer to come up with a list, maybe writing it down would jog my memory.

Shaniqua
Danielle
Tina
Holly
Boshra
Adina
Nicole
Melissa
Colleen
Laura
Jen
Lilli
Julie S
Priya
Cristi
Amy
Lyssa
current live-in banger

Jesus… How would I remember Adina, and not remember the other 4? I only slept with her once, and I barely dated her. It was completely an inconsequential relationship. Albeit, over the years I must say I’ve always made a specific POINT of remembering her as I didn’t want to forget her if ever I was to come up with a list such as this.

I gave up the search and went to bed.

The next day the other 4 popped into my head! One was a ‘certain ex-blog-a-logger’, another was the girl that told me she’d rather stick a knife in her eye than ever speak to me again, some other was this girl that I’d recently gotten an e-mail from stating that she’d married some extremely rich Nordic God, and the final one was this chick who possibly was the most irritating person I’ve ever met.

Half of me was relieved that I hadn’t made that number up in my head, and the other half was a bit disappointed. For a couple of days, I had felt a tad purer.

After remembering these ‘lost women’, it didn’t really surprise me that I had subconsciously erased them from my thoughts. A couple of them were just very brief and meaningless flings, and the others were highly contentious. It’s funny how the mind works sometimes. To tell the truth, all of these women are phantoms in some sense. I mean think about it, over the years you meet people, hang out, perform excruciatingly intimate acts on each other, and in the end separate and become the most estranged of strangers.

Phantoms.

It’s almost as if none of them even exist anymore… Well they don’t really, at least not in my reality.

Of course, there may be an exception or 2 in there, the ones I still receive an e-mail from once in a blue moon, but generally I’m as connected to them as I am to a random body on the street.

It’s strange when you think about it.

Date Machine (not really): Happy Boxing Day

airheadgenius — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:33:00 GMT

Today is Boxing Day.
A National Holiday.
The day after Christmas.

What's it for, I hear (some of) you cry?
Dunno says me. I must've known at some point or another, but have forgotten. Something to do with servants day off from back in the day? Something to do with mothers? The modern one - the day you box up yer presents and return them to the shop. I could google it, but it's my day off. You google it.

In any case, it's a holiday. For pretty much everyone except retail staff and nurses. I cannot imagine going to work the day after Christmas - still too full of food and alcohol. It's too miserable a thought to even contemplate. I've only spent 2 Christmas's in America and both times I was expected to come in to work the next day. Except I didn't - "it's Boxing Day. I can't work on Boxing day!". "What's Boxing Day?". "Dunno, but I ain't working on it".

There's more food though, that much I do know. Cold turkey with hot bread sauce. Bubble and Squeak. Cold sausages.
All the fun of the day prior, but with less stress.
It's a cracking good holiday.

Which brings me to holidays. Or vacations as you peeps call them.

TAKE 'EM WHY DONCHA!!!!

When I first moved to LA in '94, I had to delay my job's start date by a month from the job offer because I was about to spend a month in Spain, driving down from England via France. My then almost-boss (yelling) "I am offering you a job in California and I need you next week". Me - "I am going on holiday. Hire someone else". Him - "You cannot be serious, I am offering you a job in Los Angeles", Me - hang up phone. Him, calling back - "Sorry. I did not mean to shout at you. Please would you reconsider your start date". Me - "I can't. I am going on vacation". Now, at the time, I had no idea about the condition of the nation's vacation. (Like that sentence) Nor did I know that the exchange was overheard on speaker and would became company legend. When I retold it to my English friends, everyone was like "Well, of course you can't start. You're going on yer 'ols".

Then I moved to LA, then NYC and found out about the 10 day deal. But not 10 consecutive days. No sirree. And 15 days after 15 years at my NYC job. WTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTF?????

I told the peeps back home. Here's how the conversation went...
"What do you mean 10 days?"
"10 days. Like 10 days off a year"
"I don't get what you mean. 10 days off a year???? How is that possible?"
"I know. And some people get 5"
"What do you mean 5???? Do you get a lot of Bank Holidays or something?" (that's your Public Holiday)
"Nah, less than you do"
"I really don't understand what you're saying. Are you SURE?"

Now my peeps are not thick. Just incredulous.
And so they should be.

In fairness to my actual experience of vacation in America, I got to take quite a lot more. At least more out of the office time. Twice a year, at the company I worked at for 7 years, I would spend 2 weeks in Europe. Usually Italy, France and England. Sometimes Spain instead of Italy. And I took the first and least weekend too so that I spent a clear week in England with my family and friends. Plus I'd take 2 weeks consecutively in the summer - to the chagrin of my colleagues admittedly. 4 weeks in Europe, being paid to shop was, of course, fabulous. But it was still company time not my time.

And there's people who manage to amass days off. Yep, they can't think of anything to do with those 10 days, so they roll them over into the next year. That shit kills me. Or, and this is the saddest thing of all, they are so worried about being usurped by someone else at the company that they don't dare take time off. But the lack of job security is another post probably.

But you peeps need more vacation. You are too uptight without it. Although I am probably preaching to the choir. Especially since 90% of the Nerve population state their vocation as "writer" and we all know that that means "vacationer" or at least "stay in bedder".

These days I am freelance. And I am never going to get a "proper" job in America again. It's just too much like hard work. Does that sound lazy? I don't care. My work ethic's on its 'oliday!

It's hard to find a date with a compatible holiday ethic. There's the freelancers like me with lots of time on their hands but not enough cash to whisk me off to the Caribbean. Then there's the ones that aren't stressing over their cell phone bill, but they don't take any time off so there's no time to spend it with them.

It's very odd living in someone elses country you know...

He's not good looking, but he's one of my favourite actors of all time. Plus he's currently in the film we're watching on telly (Chronicles of Narnia) and he flew back to England on the same plane as us last week and I spoke to him. Ray Winstone.

Here are some I made earlier:
Merry Miserable Fabulous F*cking Christmas
Persistent, interested or just plain annoying?
Do blondes have more fun?
A nod to amboabe
The road less travelled

Nerve Machine - How I Love Thee And Your Beautiful People

spjv840 — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:50:00 GMT

Nerve has some of the most beautiful people you'll find on a personals site. I recently had to do research on all the other personals sites for an article I'm writing and I can tell you that the pickings here at Nerve are a whole other planet.I mean, yeah they all turn out to be pretentious asshats, but damn, aren't they nice to look at.The last few weeks I've been getting messages from the most lovely men. There's one in particular...sigh. If I were single I'd be on him like white on snow.

On that note, here are some things that I love about Nerve personals:

- The beautiful people

- The fact that you can find people from just about everywhere

- Profile layout, definitely one of the best profiles you can have on a personals site (except maybe OKCupid..)

- It's easy to find people who can have an intelligent conversation or at least folks who have a life outside their apartment door

Things that I hate:

- The general doucheyness of the pretentious asshats mentioned above (you know what I mean, you can probably find a few of them lurking around here)

- The "flirt" feature. Why oh why must they have this? Please don't send me winks, I just delete them - unless you're ridiculously good looking.

- It costs a lot of $$$ to have a gold member account (one of the perks for writing here - it's free)

And in case you were wondering, the personals site, plentyoffish, scored the lowest of all the places to meet your mate in my article. If you're interested in reading it, please contact me!

So good job, Nerve! You're definitely the best personals site on the web!

Happy holidays and don't drink and drive.

Love Machine: Using Your Words, or I Like Pap

amboabe — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:01:00 GMT

I usually begin all of my emails with "heyo." I'm not sure how I got into this habit. That word isn't a part of my spoken vernacular at all, and I can't think of anyone I know who used it with me first. It's entirely opaque. It sounds arcane, like something an uncle would say in some dusty reference to Archie comics. It's breezy and has some suggested energy behind it, like the thoughtless greeting that a friend would give you while preoccupied with the lingering tentacles of some past task. It's also deeply affectionate. With some people I use the word like a casual brushback to show indifference, but with others, it's a little caress, a gentle thumb stroke across the chin.

The trouble is that all these distinctions happen on my side. They have nothing to do with how my words are received by whomever it is I send them out to. I used to have a penchant for saying the word "pap." It's perfectly vulgar, dismissive, and clinical. My friend C has latched onto this word as the singular identifier of a basic revulsion she gets when talking to me some nights. The way I slip it into a conversation about movies or the proper way to batter fried chicken makes her recoil in disgust. "I can feel my vagina crawling up inside my body when you say that," she told me the other night after a thoughtless use of the word.

"Pap" has become shorthand for the nature of our friendship; simultaneously intimate and physically repulsive. She lets me tease her with the word, knowing all of its nauseating associations for her, and it lets us become even closer. It's a concession to the final absence of sex between us. Her revulsion would hurt me if I had any sexual interest in her. I'm sure she would be deeply alarmed by how callous and clinical I can be if we had a physical relationship.

Seeing her disgust at the word, and my relative indifference to it, is a reaffirmation of our friendship. When I use the word with other people it goes unnoticed. It's almost meaningless, falling between the conversational cracks. It's disappointing that no one else seems to get the same meaning from the word that C immediately plucks out.

On some of the dates I've been on lately I've noticed a similar disappointment. I wind up saying the same things over and over again, telling the same stories in the same terms. Going on a string of first dates on exacerbates this. How many times have I told the story of why I moved to San Francisco from LA over the last few weeks? How many inquisitive stares have looked at me while I explain my job. The words bubble out and evaporate immediately. They have no owner.

Being in a relationship is like sharing a secret language. The same words that people use to buy carrots and talk to their relatives are imbued with eros and intimacy. They become fingers that you can touch someone with, tickling them, pinching them, caressing them. With strangers, they're cold, clinical probes, little pebbles you take turns tossing into your date's metaphysical pond hoping one will catch somewhere and skip along the surface leaving a rippling trail in its wake.

I still find myself on dates, after an hour or so, realizing that I'm using someone else's words. I'm still not over the last woman I was seeing. I don't like saying that. I want to be glib and pulled together about it. Moving on. Moving forward, ever upward. Then I reach the point in the night where I realize I'm using her words. I'm sending all those verbal gestures and little touches to someone who isn't there.

Which is usually when I lean in to kiss my date. It's easier to pretend with my eyes closed.

Previous Posts:

Sex Machine: Listening to the Neighbors Have Sex

Date Night: In Which I Try To Believe In Aliens

Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines Redux

Sex Machine: Shave My Bush

Date Night: The F U Date

Love Machine: Taking A Break From Dating

Sex Machine: There's a Possibility You've Been Infected With HIV

Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines Redux

amboabe — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:44:00 GMT

It's scary writing about my personal life. I don't know what it feels like to read these posts, but writing them can be frighteningly uncomfortable. It's one thing to be blunt, or confrontational, but to be totally naked in front of anonymous audience, confessing the most vulnerable details of my life makes me woozy some nights. It would be so easy to mislead. To not have to reconcile with my less appealing qualities and histories. Discrete omissions and a few contorting adjectives could thoroughly reshape any story. I have lots of unattractive qualities, but none make me feel more vulnerable than the way I try and pick up on a woman.

I'm not embarrassed about any general approach or specific habit, but there's a lurking fear that whatever I'm doing is ridiculous on some level. Approaching strangers with nothing more than a hazy attraction necessitates a genial reduction of one's persona to the lowest common denominator. Dating people online exacerbates this because you lose all the physical and aural context, leaving nothing but the docket of come-ons. How do you communicate attraction to a stranger without sounding like an exaggeration of your truer self?

The truth might well be the deeper image of self is fatuous. I might imagine myself a caring and generous person of relative intelligence with a deviant sense of fun, but can it really be true if I present like a nebbish slimeball in a leisure suit in real life?

I'm generally much more comfortable talking to people in real life than I am coming up with quippy emails to women who are only slightly more than silhouettes flickering across a computer screen. Thankfully Nerve saves all the messages I've written. Here are some of the first e-mails I've sent to some women who I've felt some twinge of interest in. Can that really be what I sound like? Is that really me in all those glib words of innuendo and platitudes? Look at all those elliptical dots…

"Don't hold this against me, but I have no idea what a behavior analyst is. Sounds deep…. You have a beautiful smile."

"heyo, is that a socially adept way of starting an email? I wonder… so tell me more about your electronic dictionary, it sounds fantastic."

"You're reading Tolstoy and I just finished reading Dostoevsky. What a coincedence… All of which is a roundabout way of saying, hi. I think I like you (or at least your cleverly crafted profile)."

"What's the nerdiest strategy game you've been playing lately? I think you're much prettier than Shelly Duvall"

"Jungian feminist theory is like a second language to me. Total coincedence! Anyway, I think you're pretty. Just wanted to say hi"

"You have nice taste in goggles. I don't speak Spanish but yo quiero una aventura."

Previous Posts:

Sex Machine: Shave My Bush

Date Night: The F U Date

Love Machine: Taking A Break From Dating

Sex Machine: There's a Possibility You've Been Infected With HIV

Love Machine: Let's Make Babies

Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines

Sex Machine: My Kingdom for a Boner

Date Machine: Don't Make Poopy in the Office

Nerve Confessions: Fat and Skinny, Ugly, Pretty

Date Machine: Surviving the Holi-Daze

spjv840 — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:34:00 GMT

I'm sure I don't have to tell you this, but I don't like Christmas. I try not to celebrate any holiday, mostly because I just don't care. I'm not Christian, Jesus doesn't mean anything to me except for the odd times I try to wonder what kind of lay he was. (Come on, it's Jesus! He had to be great - alas, he is not the reason for my season.) With that said, I always tend to find myself with men whose family Christmas means something.

This is OK, I mean, I'm not going to play scrooge and ruin someone's Christmas, but I'm so not into Christmas dinners and get-togethers and what-have-you. My first boyfriend who I spent 6.5 years with, his family didn't do a whole lot and it wasn't that big of a deal when I didn't go to their Christmas supper, mainly because the thought of a sit down dinner like this makes me vomit and stress out for two-weeks. He said it was OK that I didn't go and didn't make a big deal out of it - of course, now I'm sure he did mind but just didn't tell me (you can tell me now). My first Christmas back in Canada was when I was with DreamBoy) and things were starting to go south for us already. I was not having a good holiday season and it was truly a holiDAZE, if you catch my drift. He had known of my little dinner phobia beforehand, and I told him I didn't think I'd be able to go to his Christmas/birthday dinner at his parents. I was feeling depressed, ready to die/kill, and couldn't stop crying for various reasons. We broke up the day after Christmas.

This year is a little different. My boyfriend won't stand for me "being scared" to go to a Christmas dinner. Plus, I really like his family. Really like them. It's kind of like they have adopted me into their family and it feels great, honestly. They're a big, loud crazy bunch and while I'm scared out of my wits about going this year, it's not as nerve-wracking as it was last year (you know, being the new girlfriend at the table - nothing more awkward than that, no matter how many Irish coffees you have!). Oh yes, and they like to serve a LOT of wine. I love them.

With the exception of the day-after break up with DreamBoy, I've usually had pretty good Christmas+Boyfriend experiences. There's never been a disaster or a horrible gift bought or anything of that sort. I always read about these horrible Christmas dating experiences that women go through and I think "God people like to over-react about anything!" It's just freaking Christmas, people.

With that said, what are YOUR worst Christmas dating experiences? And what did you do to cope?

Date Machine: Setting Up Your Friends

amboabe — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 08:09:00 GMT

Being set up on a date by friends is a terrible paradox. It's briefly exciting to imagine meeting a brand new person who comes pre-ordained as attractive, intelligent, and beguiling by people you know and trust. That excitement quickly turns into disappointment when the vague premonition of the person turns into a fleshy, detailed reality. Predicting attraction is tough, and being friends with a person isn't always the clearest lens through which to view their relative merits as a partner. The few times friends have tried to set me I've almost always been uncomfortably reminded of my own shallowness. I usually feel mildly slighted. Can it be that my friends think I belong in the same pool of attractiveness with this foul beast?

There's no accounting for attraction. I barely understand what rippling threads pull my heart and loins towards the women I've fallen for, and it's seems the difficulty would only be intensified with a friend left in charge. The impulse to set up two friends seems more motivated by the need to join loose threads in the periphery than by a fully formed thought that these two separate humans would actually make each happier. It's more like an act of neatness. A few years ago my friend S, then happily in the midst of a relationship that would eventually become a marriage, suggested that I hang out with another of her friends whom she thought I would like a lot.

I met her for drinks (I'd write her first initial but I can't even remember it anymore – sorry S!). I knew as soon as I saw her that I wasn't attracted to her. She looked like a cartoon woodchuck stripped of her cel-shaded whimsy. Our conversation was doubly awkward, knowing that our meeting was not a product of our own devising. It felt like being a little piece on someone else's chessboard. We both agreed to come together as a matter of faith in our mutual friend, an act of blind trust and implicit desperation.

There's nothing that I want for my friends more immediately than safety. I want my friends to be well-insulated from the world, and swaddled away from any unnecessary stresses and traumas. I imagine a similar impulse guiding their process of selecting a mate for me, and suddenly I'm having a drink with the metaphysical version of a pair of mittens. Love isn't about safety or insulation. It's about one extended risk taken in slow motion. The implicit goal in dating is to find a partner for some longer period of time, and what's more risky than committing to someone for a long period of time? To speak without wavering about a future that is fundamentally uncontrollable?

Falling in love is like surfing a giant wave. You stand in the uterine pipeline, racing forward at superhuman speed, and in a precarious balance. There's no room to think about the precarious posture. A few inches left or right would be enough to send the whole endeavor in a tumbling disaster, roiling downwards to the ocean floor below. Your friends are like the nervous parents sitting on the beach watching you out on the open ocean, rising and falling in the giant swells and getting nervous. They wave you in, want to give you floaties for your arms, and a nice safe friend to go playing in the tide pools with instead.

I've been set up by friends twice. The first was when my high school English teacher told me that J up in the corner would be a good foil for my hairless poetic scrawlings. She was, for a little while. We had a lot of fun together, indulging long winding talks that were so preposterously self-righteous I wish there was a surviving transcript somewhere. Her pale blue eyes were merciless, and her thick hips and calves were tanned in a way that made me salivate subconsciously. I had an instinctual urge to want to taste her before I had the language or experience to articulate it. Then I fell off her wave and tumbled hard into the crashing undertow beneath. The second time was earlier this year. Swoon.

In both those cases, the set up was instigated by someone that wanted to see me challenged. I've become great friends with my high school English teacher, but while I was still his student he didn't much like me. His suggestion that I go chase after J for a few months was a mischievous one. I'm sure he must have enjoyed watching me squirm in an emotional scrum. What better way to repay his time for all those obnoxious essays he had been forced to grade than by watching me dangle from a thread of impossible love for a semester?

I've never tried to set anyone else up. The thought doesn't even occur to me. I don't think I'd have the heart to send anyone I care about off to dangle. And I don't think I'd have the heart to send them off for another milquetoast evening making nice with a stranger in the shallow end of the pool. Where would you even begin? Nobody knows anybody. Not that well.

Previous Posts:

Sex Machine: Shave My Bush

Date Night: The F U Date

Love Machine: Taking A Break From Dating

Sex Machine: There's a Possibility You've Been Infected With HIV

Love Machine: Let's Make Babies

Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines

Sex Machine: My Kingdom for a Boner

Date Machine: Don't Make Poopy in the Office

Nerve Confessions: Fat and Skinny, Ugly, Pretty

Dating the Web: Don't Google Fisting and Why Women Apologize So Much

Date Machine: The Woman in the Coffee Shop and The Woman at the Bus Stop

Love Machine: Your Mom Will Do

Date Machine: Scary Movies or I Peed My Pants

Date Machine: Rate My Ethics

Love Machine: Let's Just Be Friends

Love Machine: Must Be Willing to Lie About Where We Met

Sex Machine: Why Women Are Great In Bed

Sex Machine: Why Women Suck in Bed

Date Machine: The origins of my cold, black heart...plus throbbage.

zeitgeisty — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:18:00 GMT

When I was 8 years old I fell in love with a girl named Mara.

Now, we’ve all heard the perceived wisdom that children are incapable of truly knowing what love is, that what they’re experiencing emotionally is merely 'cute'.. relegated to ‘puppy dog’s tails and sugar and spice’. Well, that’s totally erroneous. I fell in love.

It was during an assembly in the main atrium of my elementary school when I first saw her.. I was just bending to my knees to get into the ubiquitous ‘indian style’ sitting position and our separate glances met. She was sporting a Dorothy Hammil haircut, a flowered blouse, and blue slacks. Her skin was a deep olive tone, and she had huge coffee colored eyes. I felt literally as if I’d been slammed in the head with a large hard salami – if you’ll pardon the salacious imagery.

For the rest of the assembly I couldn’t take my eyes off of her… I was struck by cupid’s bow.

I remember when my mother picked me up from school that day, my head was in a fog. I just kept repeating the phrase, ‘I love Mara’ over and over in my head like a mantra. It’s funny to think back on it now, the emotions were so pure, immediate, present there was no equivocation.. I was sure. As I said before, we’re all told as children that these are merely ‘crushes’ and that you’ll get over them, but I still remember Mara.

For the rest of the week, I was gonesville. I kept bumping into things, my cutting and pasting of colored cardboard started getting sloppy. I didn’t have my mind in my work. All I could think of was Mara. Around that time I had just received Glass Houses by Billy Joel from my parents, and I would sing along to ‘All for Leyna’ at the top of my voice. Me and Billy were commiserating in song. I needed to show Mara how much I adored her, or else it would eat me up inside, I would surely be consumed by the fires.

One weekend, I was out in the backyard kicking around in the dust feeling alienated, yet pretty cool too. I remember I was wearing my favorite pair of sneakers, red Olympians from Sears. I felt older, with this gnawing in my chest like a burrowing rat. All of a sudden, I knew what I had to do.

I ran upstairs, cracked out the art supplies and proceeded to create two beautiful works of art that would profess my love for Mara in as spectacular way as I knew how. I took out the magic markers and drew boldly, festooning the landscape with big red hearts, and wildflowers. In the foreground, I drew Mara and me holding hands, with more hearts buzzing around us. The final capper, in giant bubble letters I drew I LOVE MARA… I LOVE MARA!! My body crackled with electric jitter. I felt at the top of my artistic powers. I had jumped to the next level, and love was the impetus. Now, the only question was, how would I get these masterpieces into Mara’s delicate hands?

Well, here’s where the logic gets fuzzy...

In my ardor addled brain, I thought it would be a good idea to leave these laying out on my door step, with the hope that Mara might walk by,see them, pick them up, realize what I felt for her and together we would live happily ever after …

Ok.. in some ways I was a very.. slow.. child.

Still, that’s just what I did. I laid them right out on our front step. Of course it never occurred to me at the time, that the whole idea was shall we say ‘ill conceived’. I mean she probably wasn’t even living in our neighborhood, and most likely didn’t make a habit of walking up to strange people’s doorsteps searching for art. None of that entered in to the transom of my mind, all I could think of was Mara. So, I left them there and returned to the dustiness of my backyard and the business of kicking dirt and feeling cool.

Later that afternoon, sweaty from the day’s activities I checked back to the front step and THEY WERE GONE!! My heart palpitated with an excitement normally reserved for Christmas day, or CBS Special Presentations. I was literally bouncing around as if my Olympians had tightly wound springs in their soles.

‘I love MARA… I love MARA’…

I was a zombie.. I was retarded.. I was a retarded zombie. I was in love with Mara.

At dinner, I felt flush. My mind flooded with images of Mara and I running through fields together, holding hands, laughing with abandon. I could barely keep my mind on the boiled chicken my mother had run through the deflavorizing machine. I could only think of my beloved, which is the reason I hadn’t noticed my father sneak away from the dinner table. All of a sudden, I was startled by a loud, sonorous French accented mocking toned bellow barking snidely in my direction…

“WHO EES THEES MAHHRAAA?????? EET SAYS EERE ZAT YOU LOVE SOMEONE NAMED… MAHHHRAAA????!!!”

It was my father looming over the table with my drawings of love… Everyone at the table exploded into raucous laughter at my expense. I was humiliated and my love belittled. I felt ashamed and dehumanized. I laughed along too embarrassedly, but I felt deadened inside. I was ridiculed for feeling love. Love was something to make a big joke of. This was the lesson I took away.

As it turned out, this wasn’t an isolated event in my house. For years to come, all my brother and I would hear from my parents was ‘don’t ever get married’, that ‘the family is all you can trust’, that there was no such thing as love… It stands to reason I turned out the way I did. Ironically, now all my parents want is to see me settled down with someone. I think they know what they’ve done to me, and when I expound on my feelings of ambivalence towards love and dismiss relationships as mere simple minded convention, I can see the guilt in their faces.

I never forgot Mara..

In a strange way, she was the last person I’ve ever really loved, at least in a completely unpolluted sense. From time to time, I even google her. Of course, she’s probably married now with a different last name.

It's strange to think that somewhere out there, there’s a girl that was loved very intensely by a little boy during the late spring of 1980 and how she’ll go to the grave never knowing.

thora birch

My myspace - - http://www.myspace.com/10separatecatch22s

My Facebook - Zeit Geisty

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1632432989&ref=name

relationship dealbreakers

The different kinds of vaginas

bloggerdoodles

Snarky dating confessions responses

Blogger doodles

I wanna bang your friend

Show me your jugs

translations

Blogger doodles

Is there an expiration date on passion?

translations

bloggerdoodles

crazy pants

used to be cool - zeitgeisty on MTV

hurting for a squirting - the female ejaculation file

translations...

blogger doodles 3

the gardener and the rose

We fart therefore we are

TRANSLATIONS

Blogger doodles 2

My most cringeworthy moments with women

Are you a sociopath part 2

Are you a sociopath part 1

translations...

blogger doodles

The worst sex of my life

The sex and the city movie was lame

commitment phobia is a myth

Translations...

TYPES

Do.. do women really suck in bed?

The odd disconnect between profile photos and reality

50 sexual expereiences I've never had

Dating COnfessions translations

I'm a breast man... the JUGS file

John McCain makes my peepee go limp

Video blog - 'The word on the steet' - the nature of attraction.

My dating confessions TRANSLATIONS

My internet dating advice

What we want vs. What we need and the power balance between man and women

All Porn SUCKS!!

The night PAULINA and I discussed sex

How important are someone's politics when choosing a patrner?

Nerve Confessions: It's all about the looks stupid!

Sex with someone I love - The MASTURBATION file

The Greatest Online Dating story - The PERSONALS file

'But baby I HAVE to put a profile up, it's required!!' - The GIRLFRIEND file

BITE ME! - Snark.

My first kiss...a remembrance of thing past

Feel the paste in you face - The FACIAL file

Talk dirty to me!!

I abstain! The fear to fuck

The unvarnished TRUTH about dating on the internet.

BITE ME!!!

Pontifications on the bangin' of ass - The ANAL file

The brass ring

Date Machine: Hooking Up Via Facebook and A Reader Survey

spjv840 — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:04:00 GMT

I don't know what the attraction is with Facebook. Yeah, it's a great way to meet up with old friends, although mostly it's a lot of "Let's get together sometime!" that never seems to follow through. I've had old high school classmates requesting to be friends - I say classmates because using the term "friend" would be an asbolute lie. Just because I borrowed a pencil from you in geography class in seventh grade doesn't necessarily warrant a dire need to be added to my friend's list.

Back when I first discovered Facebook, one of the first people I added was this guy I used to have a big crush on back in seventh grade. I was never too sure of what his feelings were for me back at the time since basically he treated me like crap and we were, what, 13 years-old? But it was consistent. Why go through the trouble of picking on someone so much if you hate them? Fast forward about ten years. Dude starts sending me messages on Facebook, mentioing wanting to get together for a beer or three and of course, he mentions his fiance. Why married/taken men are always so eager to bed me, I will never know - most likely because their partners are uptight b*tches, but that's not important.

After a couple weeks of flirty messages and confessions of how much he liked me in high school and how he always thought we would get married (what!?), one night during a rough patch with his fiance, who had kicked him out - he taxi'd it over to my place where we split a bottle of wine and a few beers. A few hours later we were doing the nasty in my small single-sized bed. It wasn't the greatest of sex because I'm pretty sure he was feeling guilty about boning his hot high-school crush while still technically another girl's guy. He crashed out at my place for the weekend, before returning to his thin-lipped fiance with his tail between his legs. A few weeks later I got another message from him wanting to see me again, but I had moved on to greener pastures.

The green pastures just happened to be another Facebook hook up, although one that never should have happened. This one also happened to be another high school friend, although not ever a crush or possible bed partner - this was just another party friend from back in the day. We agreed to meet up one night when a bunch of us were getting together to watch a friend's band show and have a few brews for old time's sake (at least that was MY intention). After having consumed one too many beers (me) and one too many rum-in-cokes (him) we ended up making out in the cemetary on the way back to his place.

Of course, it was a huge mistake. The sex was sloppy and he was basically the kind of guy who lays back, arms behind his head and expects the woman to do all the work. After an unsuccessful go at it, we eventually passed out, his arm draped over me. When I woke up the next morning, I was still fuzzy around the edges and feeling the effects of the night before - yet we went on to have slightly improved morning sex. He came - I did not. I was then treated to the proof of my mistake when he proudly got out of bed, buck ass naked and continued to walk around and I realized he was a lot more hairer than I cared for, his ass was saggy and he had devloped quite the gut since the night before.

I can honestly say that I have not been satisfied by my Facebook hook ups.

Fellow Nerve readers/writers -

Have you had successful facebook hook ups?

Were they with strangers or old high school classmates/friends?

Would you do it again or have you learned your lesson?

Recent posts: Nerve Confessions: Celebrity Threesomes
Nerve Confessions: The Man Edition
Sex Machine: Your First Time
Love Machine: I'm Not The Marrying Kind..Or Am I?
Nerve Confessions: The Karma's A Bitch Edition
Sex Machine: Oral Sex Do's and Don'ts

Date Machine: Man's Best Friend

airheadgenius — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:27:00 GMT

I am not particularly an animal lover, although I am certainly not a hater either and have owned one or two over the years, but there was never a time that I, for example, mistook them for my children.

Today, I saw the following sights as I walked along in the drizzling rain with my humans--
A small dog clutched in the arm of a woman, with the other hand sheltering its face from the rain
A small dog wearing a bright yellow rain slicker
A dog in a dog-carrying contraption being held snugly under an umbrella.

It was all I could do not to start chanting

Dogs are Waterproof!
DOGS ARE WATERPROOF!!!

Last week, when the humans and I had to travel to the Upper White Side for a doctors appointment, large son asked me why all the dogs were being carried.
"Can't they walk Mummy?"

Now if you choose to take a real baby out for a walk, you have a couple choices-- put it in a stroller or carry it. Humans don't walk until around a year and are really not particularly good at perambulating for long until at least 3 years old.

Animals, on the other hand, get that walking thing worked out a little sooner.
And most really don't require shoes, or any other clothing because they are, errrr, dogs for example.
Ok, maybe those daft little chihuahuas might need a sweater, but they get special dispensation due to their mutant status.

So, if it isn't abundantly clear, my pet peeve (no pun intended) is people carrying their dogs and/or treating their pets like humans.

What's this got to do with dating I hear you cry?

What's up with these men with their dogs featuring OH SO PROMINENTLY in their profiles?

"Love me, love my dog. My dog is my best friend. You'd have to love my dog if you're going to love me". Blah blah blaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I don't care about your freakin' dog. I mean, I am sure it's a reasonable animal and all, but I don't care about it. Maybe eventually, it would be something I'd have to consider, but to be honest I don't see it.

And I've noticed that these very same men that are so obsessed with their dogs also love to travel. Travel is a must apparently.

Oh yeah, so how do you reconcile those two things? I've just spent 10 days away from my humans and it was really difficult for them. Presumably you throw your animals in a kennel whilst you're busy finding yourself in Goa.

I wonder if men overstate their pet love in an attempt to sound caring and, maybe even like father material? But just as likely, owning a dog is the only level of commitment a 40 something New Yawker can muster up. Kids are there 24/7 and you can't put them in a kennel, but you can ship a pet to the local dogsRus for a few days or weeks away. And even if it's dog abuse, the bugger can't complain to you about it can he? or dial up the RSPCA and file a complaint (Lord knows what you call it here)

One guy even told me that getting together would be tricky because of my commitments to my children and his commitment to his dog. Oh-kay.

I will leave you with a joke told to me yesterday on the phone by my brother. I could picture his funny face laughing as he said it.

How do you know that a dog is Mans Best Friend?
Lock yer wife and your dog in the boot of your car for an hour and, when you open it, see who's most pleased to see you.

Hehe

Glossary--boot = trunk in real English

Isn't he pretty? Robert Plant circa 1970

Here are some I made earlier:
How do you like your foreskin?
Why do men love breasts?
Who pays?
What if?
Have you ever been experienced?
Surprise! I'm Pregnant!
Dogs and Dating
Erectile Dysfunction
Daddy's Girl
I need a Frenchman
What I want
The Fart Edition
Fisting and small snatches
How bloggers date
Did he die?
Je t'adore
Zeitgeisty's Behaviour

Love Machine: Taking A Break From Dating

amboabe — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:36:00 GMT

I started talking to a woman at a party this weekend who confessed that she was taking a break from dating. I was immediately excited. I wanted her to hurry up and finish her explanation of how she had come to a point of general exhaustion in her dating life so that I could add my own thoughts. "I'm taking a break too!" I wanted to tell her. It was a thrill to have found such immediate common ground with someone I had only met a few minutes before. Everyone I knew at the party had gone home early. I had turned to the closest person I could find to strike up a conversation hoping to stave off going home early on a Saturday night. I didn't want to seem like I was hitting on her, so when the opportunity arose to disavow any immediate participation in the mating rituals of urban city dweller I felt giddy.

The idea that one can take a break from dating seems languorous and self-indulgent. It's like saying you're going to take a break from ice cream. Dating isn't easy, and it can feel like work, but it's always interesting. Even when it's patently boring, you can always learn something new about people or how you relate to certain kinds of people. And the possibility of romance sparking underneath the surface, like some exposed electrical wire, is always an exciting secret to carry with you throughout the day. I always feel an extra sense of adventure and purpose on days when I have a date.

In a lot of ways it's a privilege to be able to apply so much time and energy to the idea of finding a partner who'll fulfill some romantic ideal. I always wonder about the comparative success of arranged marriages, at least compared to the staggering divorce rates in the unarranged world. I wonder if it isn't entirely reckless to believe that you can select your own mate using a divining rod whose most important criterion is love. Looking at marriage as an effective partnership between two people who agree to set aside personal agendas for the sake of a family is painfully anti-climactic. But it's statistically more likely to hold fast than the woozy promises made under a lovespell on a hot summer night.

One of the most rewarding things about being in Peace Corps was seeing how quickly and totally all the socially constructed barriers between people can be broken down. I remember the first day showing up for staging and looking around the hotel conference room at the rabble of oat-fed college graduates looking attentively at the bullet points on a government-issue whiteboard. I couldn't believe I had traded my real friends and family for this group of sandal-wearing do-gooders. It was repulsive to imagine I was leaving behind a life I had so carefully built for this random group of people who were so earnest and idealistic that they almost should have been wearing helmets.

A few weeks later we might as well have all been menstruating on the same lunar cycle. Stripped of country, companionship, language, and possessions, the need for trust and intimacy become irrepressible; like the unavoidable urgency of oxygen when you've been underwater for too long. Bonds form and love grows like a flower sprouted in cow shit, no less strong or real for its crass beginnings.

Sometimes dating feels like hurling yourself against another person's outer barriers over and over again. Both sides want the closeness, acceptance, and intimacy, and neither side trusts the other will be able to provide them. So we fixate on politics and fashion, deconstruct taste in music or movies, and use them as barriers to keep from having to offer someone empathy. We circle each other in bars and coffee shops, evaluating, approaching, and dismissing; as if love were something you simply find and not something you give.

I was just about to start telling all of this to the woman at the party, the pudgy one with horn-rimmed glasses who I was worried would think I was hitting on her. Twenty seconds after I told her I was taking a break from dating, she excused herself to go outside for a cigarette. I looked around the room and didn't see anyone I recognized. Then I left.

Previous Posts:

Sex Machine: There's a Possibility You've Been Infected With HIV

Love Machine: Let's Make Babies

Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines

Sex Machine: My Kingdom for a Boner

Date Machine: Don't Make Poopy in the Office

Nerve Confessions: Fat and Skinny, Ugly, Pretty

Dating the Web: Don't Google Fisting and Why Women Apologize So Much

Date Machine: The Woman in the Coffee Shop and The Woman at the Bus Stop

Love Machine: Your Mom Will Do

Date Machine: Scary Movies or I Peed My Pants

Date Machine: Rate My Ethics

Love Machine: Let's Just Be Friends

Love Machine: Must Be Willing to Lie About Where We Met

Sex Machine: Why Women Are Great In Bed

Sex Machine: Why Women Suck in Bed

Date Night: All By Myself on a Saturday Night

Sex Machine: Spank My Ass

Love Machine: Infidelity or How Long Can You Go Without Cheating?

Date Night: The 45-Minute Walkout

Date Night Redux: H's Version of Our Night Out

Celebrity Confession: Who is Lauren Cohan and Why is She Hitting on Me?

Sex Machine: My First Muff Dive

Crying in Public: Remember the Cheerleaders

Sex Machine: Masturbating Upside Down

Date Night: Two Women in One Night

Nerve Confessions: Rate My Penis Size

Crying In Public: The Sichuan Night Train

Love machine: How I Date On The Internet

Sex Machine: Rate My Blowjobs

Crying in Public: My Cubicle

Date night: Who pays?

airheadgenius — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 21:42:00 GMT

Yesterday. my friend came to hang out with me and the kids for the rainy afternoon.
We drank tea and talked whilst the kids buzzed around and then I cooked dinner - I am a domestic goddess after all.
My friend didn't plan to stay, even though it was roast chicken and starting to smell delicious, but as time marched on and she hadn't heard from her date for the night, she decided to stay.

We talked about flaky friends and flaky dates. We talked about dating in general.

She said "why don't you go out tonight? I'll put the kids to bed".

Now I am not traditionally very good at accepting help. Favors. Whatever you want to call it. But in these trying financial times and with the cost of babysitters being what it is, it was an offer too good to refuse. She popped home to get her laptop so she could work and I cleaned up the kitchen and got my glad rags on.

Which brings me to the topic of my blogversation
The cost of dating.

It's come up a couple times before, but here it is again...

WHO PAYS ON A DATE??

Years ago, in 1999 when I was last dating, I would pretty much pay halves for dinner, or go alternate rounds for drinks. Once in a while, the guy would pay, but it was mostly a shared expense. But that was back in the day when I earned a lot more money and had way less expenses. Now, post kids, I can surely see the benefits of an "old fashioned" man. Going out for a drink - a chemistry experiment if you will - costs me a minimum of $45 in babysitting fees. Sometimes as much as $90. Now of course that's my responsibility, but if I am also going to go dutch on the check, my dates get expensive pretty quickly. And, once in a while, they are a giant waste of money.

letigre1974 - bless his little Canadian socks posted on my old blog more than once that peeps should show up with babysitting money. Hell no! Not even a mention. Now I am not saying for a moment that anyone should pay the babysitter on my behalf, and even if they offered, I can't imagine taking the money, but in my experience at least, letigre is a one off.

But, I appreciate it when my date picks up the check because I have usually already made a financial investment in the evening. (Wanted to use "chemistry experiment" again to be honest as I am so damn pleased with it!) And I don't much appreciate it if my date doesn't even have enough money to pay his share. That really blows.

So, dear reader, I am not going to ask who *should* pay because I don't have a judgement on it, but I am curious to know ladies and gentlemen, parents and non-parents alike...

Who would you LIKE to pay for the date and WHY?

It occurs to me that a long date could cost me $90 in babysitting dues, plus dinner and drinks. At that point, I'm looking at a couple hundred dollars for the chance to get laid. If I am dropping that kinda cash, I may as well hire a professional.

Colin Firth. I feel confident that he wouldn't even let me reach for my wallet, much less let me pay.

The obligatory back catalogue:
What if?
Have you ever been experienced?
Surprise! I'm Pregnant!
Dogs and Dating
Erectile Dysfunction
Daddy's Girl
I need a Frenchman
What I want
The Fart Edition
Fisting and small snatches
How bloggers date
Did he die?
Je t'adore
Zeitgeisty's Behaviour
Rate my Profile
My kink is better than your kink
The good the bad and the ugly
I am a whore
First Date sex?
Small Juicy Ones
The Perfect Blowjob
What is a boyfriend
Friends with Benefits
Real Women
Another quick pull out
Lesbian Lovers Come Out
Digits
Asymmetrical Knobbage
Cunning Linguist
Cunnilingus
Fabulous at 40
Winehouse Reveals
The Chick Facial File
Mirrors
Confession plus Daily Knob!
Abusive?
Celebrity Confessions: Boy George
Dick Trilogy Part 3
MORE dicks in my inbox
Dicks in your inbox
Read my Sodding Profile!
Nerve Confessions: Herpes
The Queen Confesses
The Arse Man Cometh
The Ass Play Chronicles
The Sandwich Blowjob Porn Connection
Bangin Ass
Deformed Dicks
Did I really dream that?
Why I don't date Celebrities
Fashionably late or just a slacker

Love Machine: I'm Not The Marrying Kind.....Or Am I?

spjv840 — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:12:00 GMT

I'm in this really weird state of mind. I spent the last couple weeks stressing over the fact that I might be pregnant. I've been pregnant before so I know what it feels like. Airheadgenius' post about pregnancy made me want to write a whole post about the subject but then I decided not to get into it. People would surely start spewing their political bullshit and quite frankly I have no interest in hearing it. But the last few weeks I felt that familiar pregnant feeling. My tits hurt just if you looked at them too long, I was eating non-stop and having weird bouts of nausea, weird crying jags followed by intense blow ups. I was getting ready to pee on a stick by the end of the week and have to face my boyfriend again with the bad news. If you know me, you know I'm as fertile as a goddamn flower bed, which is ironic because, for the most part, I don't want to become a mother. I love kids, don't get me wrong. I love when my nephew comes bouncing over and jumps on the couch and jumps on his uncle and begs for candy which I secretly give him and I love watching him torture the cat and playing with his uncles old Ninja Turtles toys from the 80's. But at the end of the day, I am glad when he goes back home and is someone else's responsibility. It has nothing to do with with maturity, selfishness or anything else. I just have zero interest in becoming a mother or having "a family" in the traditional sense of the word.

This morning I woke up in a strange mood. Relieved because my period had started, which also took a huge load off my shoulders. I don't think I could have gone through the pain and sadness that follows having to terminate a pregnancy.There was an other feeling on hand this morning, though. Marriage. Last night, while drinking many celebratory Obama beer and crying about this and that and freaking out at my boyfriend, we managed to have some kind of talk about the future without speaking directly about it. I'm one of those gals who doesn't really talk about feelings and other bullshit like that. I'm not going to try and get a guy to open up about his feelings or ask him what he's thinking every hour on the hour. That shit pisses me off. However, last night a lot of garbage flew out of my mouth. We'll blame the booze..it's always the best excuse.

My boyfriend and I already discussed the fact that we don't want to get married in a traditional way. We don't believe in church and have no wish to be married in one, behind one, or next to one. God will not be overlooking my wedding, should that day ever happen. But I want to marry him. I don't want to wear a white dress, have thousands of dollars spent on food, clothes, flowers, whatever the hell people spend money needlessly on for their wedding. I want to get married wearing a purple tube dress over my frayed jeans and beat up camouflaged Converse. I haven't told him about this. He doesn't know that I want to marry him. I've never wanted to marry before. I'm not even entirely sure I want to marry, honestly, but today, right now, I would love to say to him, "I love you, let's run off to Vegas and get married by Elvis and then have honeymoon sex in a big vibrating round bed"- this feeling might pass, just like heart burn after eating spicy chili (it does kind of feel like a bad case of indigestion), but maybe not. The morning after I had met him, I was completely enamored with him. I kept telling friends, "He's so perfect for me" and "He will be mine, you watch!" and I even blurted out "I'm going to marry him one day" - which was saying a whole lot becauseI don't think those words ever came out of my mouth before that, let alone after spending one night with someone. But I'm getting off track.

What makes someone the marrying kind? Is it a desire to have a family, a suburabn house with a goldren retriever and prescription meds for when your husband "works late" four nights out of five? Is it a desire to be with someone completely and utterly for the rest of your life? Is it a business deal like Lori Gottlieb wrote in The Atlantic back in January? Is it a need to be secure? Someone to look after you?

I don't think I'm the marrying kind.I don't know what kind I am, honestly.I don't particularly have a desire for anything mentioned above, except maybe wanting to be with someone completely and utterly. Maybe I'm just the kind that has finally realized that I can be secure in this relationship, that I don't need to worry about petty bullshit like I tend to do and that our little family with our cat, pit-bull puppy and all our plants is just what I want and need, and I don't need a ring to tell me that. Although, a cake right now with two little action figures on top would be pretty great.

So, are you the marrying kind?

Date Machine: Dogs and Dating

airheadgenius — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:40:00 GMT

Last night, I stayed at my brother's house. He and his family had gone overnight to an amusement park and they needed someone to look after their dog.

Said dog and I took an early morning constitutional and it occurred to me that I hadn't walked a dog by myself for about 20 years – since the last time I owned one.

The day was bright and sunny and cold. The dog and I – a chocolate lab for those of you into that kind of thing – wandered along the country lanes and then I let her off her leash in an enormous field. She ran and ran until she was a speck in the distance. I whistled loud and, luckily for me, she came back. My brother wouldn't have been best pleased if I'd lost her.

As I was standing in this field, surrounded by Suffolk's beautiful countryside, I realized that I couldn't hear a sound. Well, at least I couldn't hear people. Or cars. Or machinery. Just birds chirping.

My house in Brooklyn is quiet, but when the calm is interrupted, it's usually by a siren's wail. Or, if I am in the garden, by the barking of a cooped up dog. Probably a rottweiler or a pitbull.

"It's a dog's life". But what a world of difference between the life of a Brooklyn dog and a Suffolk dog.

And what of the humans?

I've written about this before – the differences between the dating life of the lesser spotted New Yorker versus the dating life of the greater spotted rural dweller.

In the countryside, you are surrounded by space. If a couple of other dog walkers had arrived at my field, it would have felt like a party. But of course, they didn't arrive because the next dog probably lived a field or two away.

The dog run at any park in the city is over populated and the dogs scurry around in circles because there isn't enough room to run in a straight line, sniffing as many arses as they can.

Not unlike dating really.

Dating in New York is frighteningly similar to the dog run at Union Square. The animals in question have a recognized pedigree, are groomed just so and have all the trappings of dogdom. There is no particular allegiance to one dog in the run and it's a given that the sniffing will take place. With an abundance of arses to sniff, it's almost impossible for a red-blooded animal to limit themselves to just one and consequently long term commitments are never formed. How can one choose when the choice is endless?

I spent my first 20 years in the countryside. The most populated of my habitats was the small market town of Bury St Edmunds. From then I went on to bigger places: Leicester and London, LA and New York and, on arriving in the big city, I felt like I"d been a city girl all along.

But even though the pace of city life agreed with me, I found the dating scene very odd. The juggling of several beaus never did sit well with me and, for the most part, I didn't do it. But with my latest escapades into the world of internet dating, it seems hard not to do the juggling thing. Unless one meets someone "perfect", the profile remains open and the emails continue to fly.

But I prefer the way dogs behave in the countryside.

The obligatory back catalogue:
Erectile Dysfunction
Daddy's Girl
I need a Frenchman
What I want
The Fart Edition
Fisting and small snatches
How bloggers date
Did he die?
Je t'adore
Zeitgeisty's Behaviour
Rate my Profile
My kink is better than your kink
The good the bad and the ugly
I am a whore
First Date sex?
Small Juicy Ones
The Perfect Blowjob
What is a boyfriend
Friends with Benefits
Real Women
Another quick pull out
Lesbian Lovers Come Out
Digits
Asymmetrical Knobbage
Cunning Linguist
Cunnilingus
Fabulous at 40
Winehouse Reveals
The Chick Facial File
Mirrors
Confession plus Daily Knob!
Abusive?
Celebrity Confessions: Boy George
Dick Trilogy Part 3
MORE dicks in my inbox
Dicks in your inbox
Read my Sodding Profile!
Nerve Confessions: Herpes
The Queen Confesses
The Arse Man Cometh
The Ass Play Chronicles
The Sandwich Blowjob Porn Connection
Bangin Ass
Deformed Dicks
Did I really dream that?
Why I don't date Celebrities
Fashionably late or just a slacker

Reynaldo Gianecchini. No extra info required.

Sex Machine: Going Down Do's and Don'ts

spjv840 — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:22:00 GMT

Ahhh, oral sex. Giving it, receiving it, doesn't matter - It's one of life's little joys. It's good to know some basic do's and don'ts when it comes to going down.

Do Make Eye Contact
Whether you're giving or receiving, making eye contact with your partner is a huge turn on. It shows that you're connected - not in the "Big Brother" "I really feel like we have a connection even though we're both competing for a million bucks" connection, but the "I am here, you are here, and we are having incredible sex right now" connection. It's also a great way to tell if you're both into it. If you keep your eyes closed tight during the whole thing, you might come off as a "God I can't wait for this to be over" prude.

Do Start Off Slow
For most women (there are always exceptions) jumping right in to it and attacking her clit like an ice cream cone can often have the opposite effect you're going for. Make small steps interesting by kissing, licking and teasing before going for the gold. The same goes for men. Jumping his cock and trying to race to the finish line is not the best way to get him to come. By going slow you build up the anticipation of what's to come, literally. When s/he wants you to pick up speed, they will let you know.

Do Make It Your Choice to Spit Or Swallow
Everyone has their own preference for this eternal debate. Whether you spit into a towel or Kleenex or gulp it down and pretend to love it, the choice is ultimately the person who will end up with the mouthful of jizz. There is no real reason not to swallow, if you're worried about health concerns. Unless your guy has a case of funky spunk, the taste is nothing horrible and tastes better than tofu soaked in brussel sprouts. If you're worried about gagging, just keep a towel or tissue close by for you to spit into. For some reason unbeknown to humans, however, guys love when you swallow their sperm. The fact that their little men have just made it down your throat canal is a huge turn on.

Don't advertise your blow job on a billboard.

Your dick isn't that big, even if your ego is.

Don't use your teeth.
Little nibbles on the inner thigh? Cute. Sinking your teeth into your man's penis? Not cute.

Don't blow air into the vagina.
It does not feel good. Case closed.

Don't make slurping noises unless your partner likes that.
(FYI: They probably don't.) But do let her/him know you're enjoying the hard work by giving little moans/groans of enjoyment.

Don't suck directly on the clitoris for long periods of time.
It gets uncomfortable after a while and you'll probably get that tap, tap on your shoulder.

For women, don't be afraid to use your hands.
While your mouth is busy with his cock, use your hands and play with his balls. Or switch it around, use your hands to play with his cock while you suck/lick his balls. He'll thank you for it after, trust me. When you have one of his balls in your mouth, it's the perfect time to ask for that necklace/jacket/bag.

For men, mix it up a bit. Don't constantly lick in one place.
Flick, lick, nibble and swirl with your tongue. Use your hands and explore the rest of her. If you have bad hand-eye coordination, keep your hands on her breasts and play with her nipples.

When in doubt, ask your partner if you're doing it to their satisfaction.

If you get that tap, tap on your shoulder, don't persist on continuing. A woman knows if she's going to come or not that night. If she taps you on the shoulder and does that little head shake, at least she's being kind to you and letting you know so you don't get a tongue cramp in twenty minutes. It might make your dick shrink, but it's better than forcing something that ain't going to happen.

Related posts: Nerve Confessions: Why Can't We Be Friends?
Nerve Confessions: Analyzing "I Love You"
Nerve Confessions: I Know You Have A Girlfriend But You Feel So Good In Me
Nerve Confessions: Letting Go and The Top 5 Movie Break Ups
Sex Machine: Oh Yeah, That I Did
Sex Machine: I've Never Done That
Sex Machine; Why Guys Sometimes Tend To SUck In Bed
Sex Machine: Please Slap My Ass
Nerve Confessions: I Fell In Love In A Week
Nerve Confessions: Datin' Daddy
Sex Machine: Are You A Frankfurter or A Mr. Pencil?
Nerve Confessions: Tattoos & Piercings - Plus The Top 5 Hottest Tattooed Men and Women
Nerve Confessions: Shut Up And F*ck Me
Celebrity Confession: Eva Mendes Had Sex in All 50 States
Nerve Confessions: Single and 30
Sex Machine: Toss My Salad
Nerve COnfessions: Should I Stay Or Should I Go
Personals Drama: I'm Not Cupid
Date Machine: You're Not My Type
Sex Machine: The Butt Sex Bandit
Sex Machine: Hot Sex Vs Bad Sex

Date Machine: What I want

airheadgenius — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:12:00 GMT

(This clip is worth a look. Great ad on the benefits of smoking and how to do so in moderation!)

A date from a few weeks back asked me what I was looking to get out of dating on Nerve.
He said "clearly you like having sex, but what else do you want".

That's the $64,000 question.

Dunno really.

I described one of the things that would be cool. Having someone to do things with (other than friends I already have of course)
Like, and here's one of my big "things I want to do" items:

Buy a Design Within Reach custom edition Airstream (check out this baby, it is mighty fine) and tour around Europe in it.
I described this adventure in reasonable depth with, as anyone that knows me will attest to, childlike glee. (Apparently if I am into something, I get all sparkly)

Anyways, my date says "that sounds awful!".
His version of it was the same trip in luxury hotels.
It was actually a pretty entertaining moment in the date, but needless to say we've not been out again.

(In reality, being in a very enclosed space with 2 little boys might be like hell on earth, but the fun is in the imagining sometimes and having someone to imagine with is half the battle won)

And here's where we get to the tricky bit:
What I want in my imagination and what I can have when I actually try and fit it into my life are two dramatically different things.

I broke up with my kid's father in 2003, half way through my pregnancy with our second child. Since then, I've had some short term things, a couple friends with benefits, but never a "serious" relationship. No one has ever met my kids. No one has spent the night (there have been some 6am throw outs, but I've not let anyone be there in the morning)

Yesterday morning, I woke up at 4am and got ready to leave my house to go to the airport. Today, I am writing this in Suffolk, England.
Wednesday night, as I put my children to bed, they were crying inconsolably. They wanted to come with me. They didn't want me to leave. With the exception of a long weekend in Aruba for my 40th birthday, we've not been apart. As I kissed their sleeping heads goodbye at 5am on Thursday morning, I couldn't stop crying.

I don't like being 3000 miles away from my children, but this trip is going to be difficult (I am here because my dad is having major surgery as part of his cancer treatment) and it just wasn't appropriate to bring them.

What I am really trying to write about here is love. Or the capacity for love maybe.

I love my children. They love me. I cannot imagine an actual real world relationship that accommodates them. To find someone who loves them as much as I do and as much as their dad does. Is that even possible? And if it isn't possible, then I don't have the capacity for a relationship that doesn't add to their lives.

I need someone to have sex with, but all the other bases seem to be covered. I am not lonely. I am not bored. Or sad. I have good people in my life and my children have given me this enormous capcity to love that is healthy and powerful. There's no games, no bullshit, just love.

Which is probably why the FWB scenario is the one I keep coming back to.

This isn't very coherent. My brain is a little addled under the circumstances. And this is probably not Date Machine fare, but it's on my mind so I'm throwing it out there.

Have a good American Day. I am off to the swimming pool to clear my head...

The obligatory back catalogue:
The Fart Edition
Fisting and small snatches
How bloggers date
Did he die?
Je t'adore
Zeitgeisty's Behaviour
Rate my Profile
My kink is better than your kink
The good the bad and the ugly
I am a whore
First Date sex?
Small Juicy Ones
The Perfect Blowjob
What is a boyfriend
Friends with Benefits
Real Women
Another quick pull out
Lesbian Lovers Come Out
Digits
Asymmetrical Knobbage
Cunning Linguist
Cunnilingus
Fabulous at 40
Winehouse Reveals
The Chick Facial File
Mirrors
Confession plus Daily Knob!
Abusive?
Celebrity Confessions: Boy George
Dick Trilogy Part 3
MORE dicks in my inbox
Dicks in your inbox
Read my Sodding Profile!
Nerve Confessions: Herpes
The Queen Confesses
The Arse Man Cometh
The Ass Play Chronicles
The Sandwich Blowjob Porn Connection
Bangin Ass
Deformed Dicks
Did I really dream that?
Why I don't date Celebrities
Fashionably late or just a slacker

A little on the young side, but I had to have someone English for tody's Daily Knob: Ashley Walters aka Asher D

Nerve Confessions: Analyzing "I Love You" and Other Recent Confessions

spjv840 — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:56:00 GMT

DM has been pretty dead lately, so I decided to take a look at some recent confessions that you nerve daters have submitted. There's quite a few good confessions out there lately.

"When I called you just to tell you that I love you, it would have been nice if you had said you loved me too."

This first confession really made me feel for you. I've been on both sides of the 'I love you' non-return and it's a sticky game. If you're the one saying, "I love you" and you don't get a reply, to me, it's like being hit by a trainwreck and dragged for miles. But even worse than the no reply, is the automatic "I love you" in return. You know what I mean, you've been saying it so long to someone that they say it without thinking, because it's a habit, not because they're actually aware of what they're saying. I've been in that position and all it does it is make you feel worse about yourself.

Or there's the "Me too" reply - does that even count? If you can't be bothered to add another word to the sentence, don't bother saying anything at all. Lazy love is not any better than no love.

Of course, I'm not the biggest fan of those three words. I don't toss them around like I see some people do. I was once with a man for six months and never said I love you. If I take nothing else slow, that's one thing I do take slow. Those three words are some of the few that can invole fear in me. I was cautious saying it to my current boyfriend. He said it first. Thankfully, we're both not like those people who have to say it every day twice a day in order to know that we love each other. In a way, I almost think the more you say, the less it means.

"My boyfriend only fucks me once a month, if I'm lucky."

Do you love him? Does he make you happy? If you answered no to any of those quetions, seek new romance prospects ASAP.

"My ex's first hookup was with an "older gentleman".Should I be happier that it was him instead of some dude our own age from a bar.I think I am but, not being the first to score really bothers me because, I like sex way more.It's so much easier for you ladies."

This could almost be about me, but that's not likely. My first hook up after my first big break up was with an "older gentleman". Not 50+ older, but at least a good ten years older than I was. Personally, I don't see why it would make a difference to you if your ex hooked up with an older dude after breaking up with you. I think this is more about the shrinking of your penis and not being able to get laid even though your ex is out there having a good time. Check your ego at the door.

"i watch really nasty porn. it gets me off but i would never want to try any of that stuff myself."

This one kind of cracks me up for reasons unknown. I think it might be because of the number of people who can relate. 16 people (and counting) can relate to watching really nasty ass porn, while only one cannot. I don't know what "nasty porn" constitutes today. I'm assuming it's something that involves poop being smeared over tits while a fist is lodged into places and a woman in the background fits three massive black cocks into her mouth. I wouldn't know. I watch lesbian porn to get off and here I thought that was crazy enough.

Related posts: Nerve Confessions: I Know You Have A Girlfriend But You Feel SO Good In Me
Nerve Confessions: Letting Go and The Top 5 Movie Break Ups
Sex Machine: Oh Yeah, That I Did
Sex Machine: I've Never Done That
Sex Machine; Why Guys Sometimes Tend To SUck In Bed
Sex Machine: Please Slap My Ass
Nerve Confessions: I Fell In Love In A Week
Nerve Confessions: Datin' Daddy
Sex Machine: Are You A Frankfurter or A Mr. Pencil?
Nerve Confessions: Tattoos & Piercings - Plus The Top 5 Hottest Tattooed Men and Women
Nerve Confessions: Shut Up And F*ck Me
Celebrity Confession: Eva Mendes Had Sex in All 50 States
Nerve Confessions: Single and 30
Sex Machine: Toss My Salad
Nerve COnfessions: Should I Stay Or Should I Go
Personals Drama: I'm Not Cupid
Date Machine: You're Not My Type
Sex Machine: The Butt Sex Bandit
Sex Machine: Hot Sex Vs Bad Sex

Nerve Confessions: Fat and Skinny, Ugly, Pretty

amboabe — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:40:00 GMT

I've dated several women who could reasonably be described as chubby, rubenesque, cherubic, rotund, portly, big-boned. One of my ex-girlfriends even outweighed me by a few pounds. There are lots of polite ways to try and soften the blunt edges, but there's always something discombobulating about seeing someone comparatively slender in the company of a fat person. One of my favorite topics for awkward conversation is to ask someone about the fattest person they've ever slept with.

My first kiss was with a woman who was probably closer to obese than fat. She was tall and must have weighed two hundred pounds. We were at a party and I immediately identified her as the one girl there that I would be least interested in making out with. So two hours later I was, of course, making out with her. It was really nice too. She was a fizzy ball of energy and had an air of perpetual momentum around her, as if she were moments away from levitating. She was a hungry kisser, wet and urgent without becoming completely feral.

The next day I didn't even think about calling her again. I liked her a lot but I couldn't conceive of dating someone so heavy. I don't know where that prejudice came from. I marvel at it. I resent it. Being in Denmark over the summer, I noticed a pattern of seeing big and gawky women lumbering around with considerably more attractive men on their arms. There didn't seem to be the same male-driven stigma about needing to validate some in-born sense of masculinity through a girlfriend's waist size.

I read someone's confession today that admitted an unhinged carnal urge to sleep with someone who was objectively unattractive. "he's smart, interesting, funny and a very nice guy. He's not very attractive but oh man, do i ever want to fuck his brains out. I never thought i'd want someone so badly i don't even find physically attractive."

How is this possible? How could anyone want to have sex with someone they're not attracted to? Clearly there's an element of glibness to the "not very attractive," it's like a hedging of bets against other people's expectations. He doesn't conform to the norms of what other people would probably find attractive, but is that the same as being unattractive? Why even bother couching a description of someone who triggers some inner compulsion for closeness with an acknowledgement of other people's expectations?

I often wonder how much of what I find attractive in a woman is genuine and how much is just a subconscious recognition of how closely her look assimilates with the subtle iconography of movies, magazines, and commercials. A friend of mine used to date a model and loved describing how proud he was walking into a bar or restaurant with her on his arm. How happy he was walking down the sidewalk, watching all the other men ogle the girl that had chosen him. It reminded me of the terse Patrick Bateman line, "I'm just trying to fit in."

I still trade emails with the girl I dated that weighed more than me. She was married not too long ago, to a chubby man. I look at her pictures on Facebook sometimes. They seem absurdly happy together. Of course I am biased, but she still strikes me as stunning and I don't understand what she could possible be doing with the goober grinning on the other side of the frame. Then I remember her describing how happy he makes her in an email a long time ago. A comparatively unattractive fat guy making a woman so happy she would be willing and eager to share the rest of her life with him. I can almost see it through the tinsel haze.

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